Professor Povey’s Perplexing Problems

Check out this new puzzle book for upper-level high school students & adults:

Thomas Povey is a Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where he researches jet-engine and rocket technology. In his new book Professor Povey’s Perplexing Problems, he shares his favorite idiosyncratic stumpers from pre-university maths and physics.

These problems “should test your ability to grapple with the unfamiliar,” Povey writes. “You will learn to tease new problems apart, and apply things you already know in ways you had never considered. You have all the tools you need, but you should see what amazing things you can do with them.”

Can You Solve This?

Alex Bellos shared one of Professor Povey’s puzzles in The Guardian. Can you figure it out?

The book starts off with geometry, but most of the chapters focus on various topics from physics. Some of the puzzles are accessible through applied common sense, but for many of them, it helps to have taken an algebra-based (high school level) physics course.

Kitten is just finishing up her physics textbook, and she still has one more year of homeschooling. I’m hoping to work several of these puzzles into our schedule this year. It should be great fun!

Spoiler

If like me you’re a bit rusty on your physics, don’t worry. Each answer is thoroughly explained—‌in fact, it takes a bit of discipline to close the book and try your hand at each problem before reading on. I wish they’d put the solutions in the back rather than in the main text, to make it easier to browse the problems without reading spoilers.

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